by Glenn Guilbeau, USA TODAY Sports

by Glenn Guilbeau, USA TODAY Sports

BATON ROUGE - Johnny Manziel is not the only quarterback in the Southeastern Conference to take only online classes.

LSU quarterback Zach Mettenberger will never be disciplined for missing class this fall. He has one three-hour English course, and it is online. His case is a little different than that of Manziel, who managed to stay off the Texas A&M campus for school purposes as a sophomore.

Mettenberger, who will start for the second consecutive season, is a fifth-year senior and needs only three hours to graduate in General Studies. According to NCAA rules, an athlete must take at least 12 hours and pass at least nine. However, if the athlete needs only three more hours of course credit to graduate in his or her major, he or she can take as few as three hours in a semester.

"So I'm pretty stoked about that," said Mettenberger, whose "semester" began on Monday. He didn't go to class. He went to breakfast.

"I woke up about eight, ran some errands, went to Dunkin' Donuts, came over here (to the football facility), watched some film with my coffee," Mettenberger said of his day. "About 11, I went to lunch, came back and watched film until practice. It's just like if I was a coach or in the league (the NFL). I'm up here doing my homework, which is football pretty much."

He's literally eating and sleeping football with his new offensive coordinator Cam Cameron, who was in "the league" as an offensive coordinator for 10 of the previous 11 seasons.

"First, he's done the major part in helping himself," Cameron said. "He's a hard worker. He's tremendous in our offseason program. He's very eager to learn."

Mettenberger's only hourly concern as far as the NCAA is to not exceed the governing body's 20-hour rule, which limits the number of hours an athlete can spend on his or her particular sport in a given week. Enforcement of that rule, though, has always been iffy. And in "the league," no such rule exists.

"This is his call, but he's not going to be able to sit in there with Cam and be coached all the time, absolutely not," LSU coach Les Miles said. "As a part of his 20 hours, he'll be able to get real quality meeting time and go confirm the meeting by grabbing the film himself and watching it."

Film or playbook study by players on their own time without coaches does not count against the 20 hours.

"The good news is with these iPads, he may not need necessarily to be in the football building, which is a benefit as well," Miles said.

Players who go to summer school and keep their grades up like Mettenberger deserve a semester of minimal hours, according to Miles - a 1976 graduate of Michigan in economics.

"I was never that lucky," Miles said. "I took 19 hours my last semester at Michigan. Of course, I graduated in four years. Back then without summer school, that was kind of significant. Now, our guys can graduate quickly, sometimes in three years going year round."

According to the Mettenberger Plan, he will graduate from LSU in December and from Camp Cameron perhaps in early January after a BCS bowl game and be ready for the NFL.

"I'm going to be in the football operations building every day so he (Cameron) is going to prepare me," Mettenberger said.

"I think if you're a quality student and put yourself in great position to have a semester where you've taken everything but three hours and you can enjoy that time off, I think that's a wonderful thing," Miles said. "So he can spend some extra time on game plan, which will be very important."

Mettenberger may not be studying for exams much this fall, but wide receiver Jarvis Landry has already noticed a more studious side of the quarterback.

"It's just his demeanor," Landry said. "I think everything about his over this past year has changed."

Mettenberger is apparently majoring in film.

"It's his ability to understand coaching and his ability to go in with Coach Cameron at 6:30 a.m. and watch film," Landry said. "And then right after practice, he goes and watches more film. It's about all he does."